Wretched

How can someone so f*cking beautiful be so goddamn bad?

HOLY SMOKES! Someone get me a fan as I am still overheating from these spicy scenes. Think I am with the majority of positive review readers in saying that gun scene... PHEW! With that being said, this is a DARK contemporary enemies to lovers romance and there is an abundance of graphic and explicit scenes. I would caution those who don't gel with these types of books. I couldn't put this one down. The Never After series are hitting that sweet spot for me.

In a world where Flying Monkey heroin is produced under a yellow brick road by a wicked woman, Wretched is the Wizard of Oz dark romance I didn't think existed. Eveline Westerly is truly a psycho, but you can't help by sympathize show more with her plight. Reminded me of Wicked; you can't help but want to cheer her on and want her to find a way out. She has a nasty sister, Dorothy, who killed their other sister, Nessa, and a criminal father who uses Evie for his own gain. Evie does all the dirty work no one else will do. In comes the new guy, Brayden, and Evie's world is turned upside down after recognizing he was a sizzling fling in a club bathroom a month prior, but with a different name. Brayden, aka Nick, is an undercover DEA agent sent into the Westerly operation to find the supplier. What Nick doesn't expect is to get in too deep with Evie as he tries to reconcile his lies and fake background with the bits of truth he keeps letting slip. Their relationship is volatile, to say the least, but it is clear they are two halves to a screwed up whole.

It should be noted that as a reviewer, I obviously do not condone any of the violence/behavior that occurred in this book, but I can still say this was a great book as I knew what I was going to get. I liked the ending, but I felt it was missing something that I can't put my finger on. Not sure if it felt rushed or what. Like the prior two books, I appreciated every little reference in the book. As always, I love a good playlist to get you in the mood and try to place each song as you read along. Worth a listen to as you read! show less

reading this book around the time of wicked: for good’s release was such a good idea from me as not only was it packed with references from ‘the wizard of oz,’ but also from wicked, which was so cleverly done, e.g. through song lyrics, or character / place names. because of the nature of the storyline throughout this, the plot with both evelina and nick was so addicting and really reminded me of the ‘mindf*ck’ series with how high-stakes some of the action was. i didn’t enjoy their chemistry as much as the two romantic leads in ‘twisted,’ but this wasn’t something that bothered me. i just love how emily mcintire does this whole series, and it never feels too ‘gimmick-y.’

I absolutely love Hooked and Scarred in this Never After Series unfortunately I cannot say the same for Wretched. All three are slow-burn however where Hooked and Scarred went from slow to gripping me in and then having me full on obsessed with the Characters Wretched left me feeling the opposite.
This is a reimagined of The Wizard of Oz but unlike the other two I did not connect to any of the characters to the Wizard of Oz and that can be a good thing for some people, but I was just bored, let me just get into the story and explain.
In the Westerly family Evelina Westerly is the brains, cold killer and Botanist in her family’s drug empire, she is the one her father calls upon to take care of everything from producing the product to show more handling when those are stealing from them at all cost, for the most part she is beautiful and badass so who doesn’t love this I mean to be fair I did love her role for the most part, that is about all I liked in this book.
Nicholas Woodsworth is a DEA agent undercover, seducer, and cold hearted except when it comes to his sister.

⚠️⚠️Possible Spoilers so read at your own discretion⚠️⚠️
.
.
.
.
The whole plot is Nicholas getting undercover so he can take down this family but in turn he gets more than he bargains for. He falls for Eveline, which is predictable but come on, this man has this traumatic back story or chip on his shoulder for what drugs has done to him and his family and he goes from being dead set to take them down to being head over heals for the supposed biggest villain in the book. I say supposed because despite what I stated above she is not the main villain at least not what I consider to be a bad guy. Which brings me to the other villains – Dorothy, Evelina’s sister – a bratty, prissy, shallow character that really has no character development in this story except for being an annoying pain in my rear and their father that for the life of me I can’t even remember his name right now and I legit finish reading it 5 minutes ago. Goes to show how much I just did not connect or get involved with this book.
The story just overall fell flat for me, it was not for me at all. There is also a scene which gave me the major icks and I am not even a sensitive person or easily offended but that scene just grossed me out so bad. It was a spicy scene involving Nick, Eveline, and a gun and that is all I will say.

If you enjoy spice sure you will like this book, but it just seemed to be forced not flow naturally to me. I cannot stand the characters except for Eveline, I like her just a tad but everyone else was boring, predictable and 2 dimensional.
This was just a huge miss for me, Sorry. But still read the first two books in the series, they are freaking awesome. (honestly, they can be read as standalone) show less

I absolutely love Hooked and Scarred in this Never After Series unfortunately I cannot say the same for Wretched. All three are slow-burn however where Hooked and Scarred went from slow to gripping me in and then having me full on obsessed with the Characters Wretched left me feeling the opposite.
This is a reimagined of The Wizard of Oz but unlike the other two I did not connect to any of the characters to the Wizard of Oz and that can be a good thing for some people, but I was just bored, let me just get into the story and explain.
In the Westerly family Evelina Westerly is the brains, cold killer and Botanist in her family’s drug empire, she is the one her father calls upon to take care of everything from producing the product to show more handling when those are stealing from them at all cost, for the most part she is beautiful and badass so who doesn’t love this I mean to be fair I did love her role for the most part, that is about all I liked in this book.
Nicholas Woodsworth is a DEA agent undercover, seducer, and cold hearted except when it comes to his sister.

⚠️⚠️Possible Spoilers so read at your own discretion⚠️⚠️
.
.
.
.
The whole plot is Nicholas getting undercover so he can take down this family but in turn he gets more than he bargains for. He falls for Eveline, which is predictable but come on, this man has this traumatic back story or chip on his shoulder for what drugs has done to him and his family and he goes from being dead set to take them down to being head over heals for the supposed biggest villain in the book. I say supposed because despite what I stated above she is not the main villain at least not what I consider to be a bad guy. Which brings me to the other villains – Dorothy, Evelina’s sister – a bratty, prissy, shallow character that really has no character development in this story except for being an annoying pain in my rear and their father that for the life of me I can’t even remember his name right now and I legit finish reading it 5 minutes ago. Goes to show how much I just did not connect or get involved with this book.
The story just overall fell flat for me, it was not for me at all. There is also a scene which gave me the major icks and I am not even a sensitive person or easily offended but that scene just grossed me out so bad. It was a spicy scene involving Nick, Eveline, and a gun and that is all I will say.

If you enjoy spice sure you will like this book, but it just seemed to be forced not flow naturally to me. I cannot stand the characters except for Eveline, I like her just a tad but everyone else was boring, predictable and 2 dimensional.
This was just a huge miss for me, Sorry. But still read the first two books in the series, they are freaking awesome. (honestly, they can be read as standalone) show less

I absolutely love Hooked and Scarred in this Never After Series unfortunately I cannot say the same for Wretched. All three are slow-burn however where Hooked and Scarred went from slow to gripping me in and then having me full on obsessed with the Characters Wretched left me feeling the opposite.
This is a reimagined of The Wizard of Oz but unlike the other two I did not connect to any of the characters to the Wizard of Oz and that can be a good thing for some people, but I was just bored, let me just get into the story and explain.
In the Westerly family Evelina Westerly is the brains, cold killer and Botanist in her family’s drug empire, she is the one her father calls upon to take care of everything from producing the product to show more handling when those are stealing from them at all cost, for the most part she is beautiful and badass so who doesn’t love this I mean to be fair I did love her role for the most part, that is about all I liked in this book.
Nicholas Woodsworth is a DEA agent undercover, seducer, and cold hearted except when it comes to his sister.

⚠️⚠️Possible Spoilers so read at your own discretion⚠️⚠️
.
.
.
.
The whole plot is Nicholas getting undercover so he can take down this family but in turn he gets more than he bargains for. He falls for Eveline, which is predictable but come on, this man has this traumatic back story or chip on his shoulder for what drugs has done to him and his family and he goes from being dead set to take them down to being head over heals for the supposed biggest villain in the book. I say supposed because despite what I stated above she is not the main villain at least not what I consider to be a bad guy. Which brings me to the other villains – Dorothy, Evelina’s sister – a bratty, prissy, shallow character that really has no character development in this story except for being an annoying pain in my rear and their father that for the life of me I can’t even remember his name right now and I legit finish reading it 5 minutes ago. Goes to show how much I just did not connect or get involved with this book.
The story just overall fell flat for me, it was not for me at all. There is also a scene which gave me the major icks and I am not even a sensitive person or easily offended but that scene just grossed me out so bad. It was a spicy scene involving Nick, Eveline, and a gun and that is all I will say.

If you enjoy spice sure you will like this book, but it just seemed to be forced not flow naturally to me. I cannot stand the characters except for Eveline, I like her just a tad but everyone else was boring, predictable and 2 dimensional.
This was just a huge miss for me, Sorry. But still read the first two books in the series, they are freaking awesome. (honestly, they can be read as standalone) show less

Evelina Westerly and Nicholas Woodsworth

Review:
A grand reimagining of the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz and finding love in the least likely of places! This quick read has it all: law enforcement, DEA, drug lords, forbidden love, redemption, and love that makes you want to burn the world to protect! I laughed, I blushed, and I could not put it down! If you enjoy retellings, I highly recommend the Never After series of fractured fairytales as a beautiful addition to your collection!

Quotes:
“But if I'm her calm, then she is my chaos, and if I can't live with her forever, then I don't want to live at all.”
"He doesn't have much, but he does have the fucking audacity."
“She’s overwhelming. Devastating. She’s going to ruin my show more fucking life.” show less

Mafia/Crime Boss isn’t really my jam — this is good to know so I don’t waste any of my time reading more books that are Mafia/Crime Boss based.

Also, Emily seems to really enjoy the age gap between her main characters. The female was 23 and the male was 32. And, literally, the only thing that they had in common was sex. They never had a conversation that wasn’t sex based. There wasn’t even any good banter between them.